Audience server

Abstract

Delivery of content such as advertisements to audience members. Profile data is collected regarding audience members to whom advertisements may be delivered, such that a given audience member has an established profile data. Upon receiving a request to serve an advertisement to an audience member, a recognition that the target of the request is the given audience member is made. Then it is determined that a particular advertisement should be served to the given audience member. The determination includes recognition of the given audience member and corresponding selection advertisements optimized for the recognized audience member. A configurable delivery decision making mode allows pre-optimized as well as delivery time factoring for determining advertisements. Performance criteria and revenue allocation based upon data provider participation are also provided.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 014,235 filed on Dec. 17, 2004, and entitled “Network for Matching an Audience with Deliverable Content,” which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 981,733 filed on Nov. 5, 2004, and entitled “Audience Targeting System with Segment Management,” which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 669,791, filed on Sep. 25, 2003, and entitled “System and Method for Segmenting and Targeting Audience Members,” which claims the benefit under 35 USC §119 of Provisional Patent Application No. 60 / 491,521, filed on Aug. 1, 2003. The entire contents of these Applications are hereby incorporated by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] 1. Field of the Invention [0003] This invention relates generally to audience targeting and more particularly to an audience server for matching deliverable content such as adverti...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0012] The present invention accommodates improved delivery of content such as advertisements to audience members, such as through a computer network.

[0016] According to still another aspect, the present invention accommodates determining the particular advertisement based upon performance criteria configured to benefit a publisher of content in which the advertisement is placed. Such performance criteria may include maximizing revenue to the publisher.

Problems solved by technology

Some known systems, however, are only adapted to receive information from a single source (e.g., registration information provided by the consumer).

Other systems may receive information from multiple sources, but are unable to usefully combine information relating to the same consumer and communicate it to the necessary content delivery system.

These systems, however, do not consider that only a portion of the group may make on-line purchases, for example, in addition to subscribing to the magazine.

This failure to recognize and differentiate “valuable” consumers can lead to lost revenue for the content provider.

Another problem with content delivery systems is that the information upon which targeting is based may rapidly become stale.

The volatility of audience member characteristics and the high volume of information to be processed both present difficulties to systems that seek to target well tailored audiences.

Still another problem with content delivery systems, particularly advertisement delivery systems, is that they are unduly contextual and reactive.

It is also difficult for publishers to serve advertisements such that revenue is maximized, or accommodate proper serving of advertisements by third party providers.

Finally, the allocation of credit and corresponding revenue for activities related to the serving of advertisements remains inadequate.

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